India marks its position as a power without pacts

COLETTE LEFEVRE

The neutrality of the Government of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has marked its position regarding the conflict in Ukraine and the Russian offensive has defined its new presence on the geopolitical board as that of a power that is not willing to close unlimited pacts or make choir with the alliance of the West. In the era of the multicentric world, for India its center is in New Delhi.

With a position read as veiled support, India, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, is - along with China - one of the nations that has refused to openly condemn Russia's actions and has refused to distance itself. of the Kremlin.

The recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, served to complete this definition with the Indian nationalist leader urging the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to seek peace, assuring that "these are not times of war ”, a public articulation that changed the perspective with which the ambiguity of India has been read since the beginning of the conflict.

""I have discussed this issue with you many times on the phone," Modi told Putin, making clear his concerns about the problems of food security, fuel, and fertilizers in the wake.

The Indian rhetoric, however, does not imply a change from its ambivalent position raised since the beginning of the war, with government spokesmen referring all their comments to official communiqués, all almost identical, each time they are addressed by the press about Russia. On the contrary, they make their position even clearer, for India, India comes first.

Since the outbreak of the conflict, India's purchases of Russian oil have risen from 2% to about 15% today, leading Russia to become the second largest supplier of crude, after Iraq, and poised to take first place thanks to the generous discounts that New Delhi began to receive since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. 

However, after peaking the previous month at about a million barrels a day, purchases began to decline last month as Moscow began to reduce the discounts granted.

The acquisition of oil is however a new element in the long history of relations between New Delhi and Moscow. Russia is the supplier of about 70% of India's weapons equipment, a huge fraction of its defense structure achieved during the Cold War, and although it has tried for years to diversify its suppliers with alliances with the United States, Israel, or France is very far from shortening dependency.

At this time, with several active conflicts and hostile neighbors, India needs the Russian alliance to confront or even mediate with China, with whom the last year has been on the verge of exploding with troops from both sides on the border. So the friendship that New Delhi continues to offer Moscow somehow keeps the Russia-China equation at bay, which for their part have established an "unlimited" friendship.

Faced with India's unalterable position, Western leaders have indeed had to soften the way they demand a definition from New Delhi, and move from the threat of international sanctions to offers now of fraternal alliances more beneficial than the Russian one.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna's visit to New Delhi was the latest in a long list of representatives and world leaders who have come to the Indian capital to try to influence the position of the Modi government. .

Colonna assured India of his resolute support for the challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, referring directly to Chinese influence, an area where India is trying to expand its presence by countering Beijing.

"We share the same concerns because we know the kind of role the Chinese are playing”, said the French government minister, framing her offer of support in the Indian agenda.

A week earlier, the European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, offered in New Delhi an alliance to reduce energy dependence on Russia, which would allow India to be involved in the European Union's plans to develop green energies.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also traveled to India to put on the table a range of opportunities for its development if it maintains Europe as an ally, also addressing the importance of an ally such as the EU in the face of the threat what the friendship between Russia and China means for the Indo-Pacific.

In the midst of the conflict, and despite the press headlines that demonize India's position, the Asian nation emerges as a different geopolitical actor with the procession of East and West.

And while the future will be decided by how things play out for Russia, India has not only secured a place at the table as a world player, it has also drawn the idea that perhaps the new world order is not just a chimera.

Colette Lefevre is a Latin American journalist and lives in India